Sorry, I have become erratic in my posting again.
However, it’s a case of swings and roundabouts and, in the matter of napping, I have become much more consistent. I suppose it all depends on whether I want to be known for my ability to write, or my ability to sleep through the boring bits on TV. The amazing thing is that I can sleep for a couple of hours in a chair, get up and start doing something. In a bed, which is supposedly designed for sleep, I can still only sleep for a couple of hours at a time, and wake up feeling like I’ve been tied in a knot.
It is, I suppose, part of the process of growing old, and I am now starting to realise the significance of my father’s words on the subject as he grew older.
I worked today, despite it being Wednesday, as the owner was due back from holiday and we wanted to ensure a seamless transition. I can have time off, or the money. If I have the time off I will end up sitting in a cold house waiting for Julia to come home, so I may as well go to work.
As I cleared the frost from the car this morning, my hands became so cold that I couldn’t get the seat belt on when I got in the car. That’s the trouble with being in a country that doesn’t have enough winter to prepare for it properly.
We have had another parcel go missing, this time a significant one. The Track and Trace system can’t tell us anymore than the fact that it’s in the hands of the Royal Mail, which is pretty useless. To be honest, the Royal Mail has been poor for a significant time now, due to the strikes. Julia posted a parcel to Canada in early November and it didn’t leave the UK until after Christmas. Since the attempted ransomware attack last week, nothing has left the country and we haven’t been able to send new parcels. We have only had two overseas parcels to post recently, so it isn’t a big deal for us. It seems they will be starting limited overseas deliveries tomorrow, but they will be very limited – letters not requiring customs stickers. That’s no use to us.
Straw Bale Bowie Bear
It is a vicious circle.
Yes, and one that is hard to break out of. Without eBay I wonder if we would still have a postal service, as nobody sends letters these days.
Good point.
My sister received a Christmas present through the post today. The postman claimed that they were now up to date with their deliveries but as she still has not received the appointment letter for a small NHS operation which she missed, she doubts whether this is strictly true. Are any of the non Royal Mail services suitable for you?
Mrs T is very sympathetic about your cold hands. Hers go white at any suggestion of chill.
White hands are very refined – mine go red and blue and look like they started life in the props room at Hammer Films.
Sorry, forgot to comment on the present. I agree with your sister – it is far from up to date. The parcel services are generally too expensive for our small parcels and the letter-box sized mail run by Evri is run by Evri, which was so bad it had to change its name from Hermes and has still been voted worst delivery service in the UK for two years running. The Post Office/Royal mail, for all its faults used to be quite good. It may become good again, but I fear it will have lost a lot of business and with declining profitability comes more cuts . . .
I wondered how the combination of strikes and hacking would affect your business. I agree with your observation that we don’t have enough winters to prepare properly for them
We currently have quite a lot of lost mail which we will probably lose, and half a dozen packages waiting to go in the post – the P&P we charge is not enough to pay for couriers. Patience and good-natured acceptance are, as you can probably guess, foreign to my nature. 🙂
That bale bear is pretty darned cute. Don’t forget those gloves next time you scrape the windshield.
Unfortunately I have no gloves with fingers. This isn’t Maine you know. Just a few days of frost and maybe an inch of snow . . . 🙂
We wear gloves for three seasons—fall, winter, and spring. 😉
It is the p[rice you pay for living amongst forests, lakes and hummingbirds. 🙂
Tee-hee! I never thought of it that way, but I suppose it’s true. Whatever the case, gloves are a fact of life for Mainers.
In UK we feel much the same about umbrellas . . . 🙂
And in Maine, we seldom carry them. We are very car dependent—alas!—and dash from car to shop and then back again.
My workmate carries one in his rucksack at all times. I have two in the bck of the car. It’s almost a national costume for those of us of a certain age. 🙂
When we were living in Somerset (2004-06) someone built an enormous straw-bale wicket with a ‘howzat’ on it next to the M5 (I think?) when we won the Ashes.
Your poor hands! I often don’t wear gloves when de-icing the car; I forget how long it takes to do!
Sounds a good use of straw! 🙂
Yes, we don’t take proper precautions for winter, do we?
I’ve read some about the current problems with the Royal Mail system. A harbinger of things to come everywhere.
Yes, such things are becoming more common, but Royal mail is a highly visible victim.
Straw bale Bears are common here in Oz and can look quite spectacular.
During the height of Covid in 2021/22 a parcel from Australia to England could sit in a warehouse in Melbourne for six months and then take another month to get to the UK.
We only have two farms I know of where they regularly build straw sculptures. They are impressive.
I’m afraid we may have lived through the high point of civilisation a all our services become worse and we gradually revert to sailing ships and patience for our postal services.